Spoilers below for Episode 4 of Cape Fear. New episodes stream every Friday on Apple TV.
Over the last three weeks, Apple TV’s Cape Fear has settled into a Morse code-like cadence: long, meandering, and richly shot dashes of vibes with heavy plot punctuated by quick outbursts of violence and drama. Episode 3 followed the pattern with the shocking return of actress Juliette Lewis to the franchise, and Episode 4 — ominously titled “Pierced” — is no different.
In the immediate aftermath of Lewis being unveiled as Max’s (Javier Bardem) as-of-now unnamed stalker, we’re plunged right back into the creepy torpor of the show. Max is shown praying at a shadowed, candle-lit altar, later approaching Tom (Patrick Wilson) at a bar and telling him that Zack (Joe Anders) “really needs a father;” if he’s not intent on disrupting the Bowden family’s lives, he certainly has a knack for accidentally running into them. Natalie (Lily Collias) lashes out at her parents and calls her stepfather a cuck, and later, Max confronts a used car salesman and torments him with the fact that he slept with the man’s wife.
While Episode 4 commits the same sin as its predecessors by frequently trading forward momentum for digging deeper into mood and tone, it’s not completely out of bounds. “Pierced” does more with swish pans, off-putting camera angles, and explosive musical cues than most series could do with an army’s-worth of in-your-face edits. Here, the style elevates the story instead of papering over its defects. It seems the point of Cape Fear is to make you feel unsettled, and in that regard, the show has been an unfettered success so far.
This week’s A-plot sees Anna (Amy Adams) attempting to free Ruben Ramirez (Roberto Sanchez), another wrongly-convicted man, from prison. This time, the inmate has all but given up and says he’s dropping his appeal, but Anna is determined and goes to the house of a man named “Smiley” who may be able to provide an alibi. What follows is a scene straight out of Silence of the Lambs as Anna talks her way into Smiley’s house, which is full of snake enclosures beautifully lit by a rainbow of lights, and tries to trick him into a confession. When he lashes out, pulling a gun while throwing her phone to one of his snakes, Anna gets the hell out of there.
Meanwhile, Navaeh/Amber — the girl who seduced Natalie in last week’s episode —takes Natalie to a friend’s house and badgers her into getting a body piercing, generally further ingraining herself into Natalie’s life. Later, the two girls break into the house of Natalie’s friend Callie and have sex in her bed. Navaeh is definitely bad news, and we’re about to find out why.
As all of this is going on, Tom tries to bond with Zack at an art show, only to find that Zack is using the opportunity to approach the girl he distributed lewd photos of the year before. This triggers Tom flashing back to his brother’s suicide, which he tells everyone was a car crash. We even see Tom repeatedly hit himself as Zack does when he’s ashamed of his own actions; it seems the apple doesn’t fall far from the sneaky adulterous lawyer.
Later, Anna asks Max — why does she keep reeling this guy back into her life? — to help convince Smiley to talk. After a shocking moment in which Max grabs and kisses her, and Anna reacts somewhere between “Get the hell away from me” and “I don’t totally mind this” (is there more to their relationship than what we’ve seen so far?), Max murders one of Smiley’s precious snakes with a fork and threatens him. We don’t see what happens next, but Max reveals a taped confession that exonerates Ramon.
We also see Anna approached by Max’s stalker. It’s frustrating that we weren’t able to dive right into the aftermath of Juliette Lewis’s Episode 3 appearance at the top of “Pierced,” but what we’re left with here is equally as compelling and disconcerting. The stalker asks Anna if “she’s his whore now,” and says to stay away from Max. She also intimates that she had something to do with the murder of Max’s wife.
The episode ends with yet another jaw-dropping revelation. Anna’s co-worker Ray (Jamie Hector) has been digging up information on Navaeh and it turns out — surprise! — that her mother was a prison nurse known to have “relations” with a high-profile inmate; in other words, she’s probably (definitely) Max’s daughter. Thus, a huge piece of the puzzle falls into place, and another giant flashing sign blaring “Stay away from Max Cady, Bowdens!” lights up.
While Episode 4 of Cape Fear takes way too long to get to the good stuff, the slow pacing and conveyor belt of jump scares and moodiness serves it well in big moments like sudden acts of rage (sorry, Mr. Snake) or series-turning reveals. While it does sometimes feel like the pacing could be sped up a bit — the show could probably be 6-8 episodes instead of the planned 10 — the artistry and cinematic scope of the story are still a welcome sight in an age of Volume-shot shows. “Pierced” isn’t a revelatory episode of television, but if you’re into Cape Fear’s richly macabre sensibility, it’s still a treat… even if it’s more of the same.